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The Tickled larch

Seeing growth in all of the shoots I left on the tree since the first styling I decided to make the tree more compact.

Starting state:

The photo on the right shows quite a mess in branch structure I left last time. Growth was everywhere but it deteriorated the state as almost all branches became too long. There was plenty of places where more than 2 branches start from the same location.

Removing the wire didn’t help at all. Almost all the branches returned to their original shape. The trunk was the main problem as being so thick did not want to stay where it was supposed to and it was clear the wiring had to stay for much longer time with stronger growth. Having thick wires around the trunk already stopped me creating jins where I wanted to so I decided to handle this a different way.

In his advanced styling course Colin Lewis tells clearly: “We don’t do ugly”. I like that. Especially that my skills are not yet in the shape to always do it like he says 😀

The technique explained and I used here was to use the guy wire but the wire would not be tied to another piece of tree or pot but would be thread through a whole in trunk/branch. Details are very well explained in the course. Here is the result:

The trunk drilling and guy wire installation was followed by:

Shortening branches heavily (each tip was left with the last 2 buds)

Creating and treating jins

Wiring of all branches again

The end result:

The view from the top (the trunk looks straight here but it has a bend perpendicular to the view line now so it is not visible in the photo below):

And here a 360 view:

next to consider

A left branch in the upper part of the tree is still way too long. Might be I don’t actually even need it but decided to leave it for this season.

The lower part of trunk might become one huge jin at one moment. Not sure about it yet, I kind of like this dragon style of the tree at the moment with white jins showing like teeth.

Pot, too deep due to problematic root system. The trunk splits into 2 quite long pieces which didn’t allow me to pot it deep enough even in this pot which I made for this tree knowing the dimensions. Maybe at one moment later on a new pot would fit better but for the moment I am OK with it, I actually even like it 🙂

On the below photos is the result of playing with the “exhibition concept” 😀 The bottom photo has the tree in slightly better position and the top one has the scroll in better location and nicer lighting which reveals the horisontal surface which to me looks better considering there is a scroll in the background.

And a trial with the wooden stand, not really a bonsai stand. It doesn’t really fit to this composition but I anyway tried: